We understand TED as a place where influential people meet on a global scale to share ideas for tackling challenging problems. With our TEDxKoeln we do not wish to create a necessarily smaller, less illustrious copy of the original. Rather we strive to transfer the format and spirit of TED into a regional context. TEDxKoeln aims to serve as a platform for passionate listeners and speakers who will most certainly profit from the exchange of ideas and who are well positioned locally to not only be multiplicators of ideas but also to act on them. This is how we envision our event to join the global discourse of concerned citizens that constitutes the TED experience.

We believe that technical progress is not the sole key for solving the urgent threats to our continued existence, but that a change of behaviour on many levels is also needed to succeed in preserving our natural habitat for the times to come. This is why we will design our TEDx event around the key issues of urban community: Energy, Property, Work and Travel, Cultural Diversity, Communication and Administration.

We plan to curate our audience, which by the nature of our license right now is limited to 100 people. For roughly the half of them we will invite community volunteers, teachers and school principals, select entrepreneurs and executives with a social conscience (or agenda, there are some, I've heard :) assuming that these per se are multiplicators and potential change agents. The other half of the tickets shall be available to the public. There will be a price-tag on the tickets, though we're not yet set on a number and there will be a short application form to make serendipitous curation possible.

Our hope and motivation is that after the show some things will happen that couldn't possibly happen otherwise.